Paul Finebaum sounds off on bowl game cancellations
Bowl season has already taken a turn for the worst and it’s barely even started, much to the frustration of ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum.
Just 16 of the 40-plus bowl games have played so far, and already a portion of the games have been cancelled as a result of COVID-`19 complications. Namely, the University of Virginia dropped out of Wednesday’s Wasabi Fenway Bowl, leaving SMU without an opponent; Miami was forced to withdraw from the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl on Friday, and now Washington State is skeptical it will receive a last-minute opponent; and Texas A&M left Wake Forest unopposed in the Gator Bowl after a COVID-19 outbreak of its own — but the Gator Bowl was able to replace the Aggies with Rutgers.
“I think you would have to be pretty naive, and I know you’re not, to think that this is all COVID-related,” Finebaum said on McElroy and Cubelic in The Morning. “Some of these are understandable, they’re on the eve of the game, some are some distance away. With each case you have to look inside. What does the roster look like? Do they have a quarterback? How did the season end?”
Finebaum was skeptical that all the aforementioned teams dropped out due to COVID-19 related concerns; instead, he suggested that there might be other factors at play. He might have a point, too, given the turmoil that some bowl-eligible teams find themselves in. Miami and Virginia, for example, are undergoing change at the helm which makes for an awkward situation. Miami fired former head coach Manny Diaz, and the Hurricanes replaced Diaz with Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal. With an impending bowl game, however, it may have made it a bit more difficult for Cristobal to fill out his new coaching staff, get to know and coach his new players and settle in, given that the interim staff was slated to coach the bowl game. The same applied for Virginia, as Bronco Mendenhall recently announced that he’d step down at just age 55. Now, first-year head coach Tony Elliot — who, like Cristobal, has some decisions to make regarding his coaching staff — can get right to it after the bowl was cancelled.
“On the other hand, I hate to say that, this is where we are right now in college football,” Finebaum continued. “The bowl games just don’t mean very much to most schools. This is not what you played or even the generation or two before that when going to a bowl game was considered a reward. Now, it’s almost considered a pain. It’s a pain, it’s something you have to do to get the season finished. A lot of players, and obviously coaches and programs, are saying, ‘You know what? The money is great, but we’ll be OK by not playing.'”
Even the games that do hold heavy implications, like the upcoming College Football Playoff, was forced to implement protocols in the event that one team suffers from a COVID-19 outbreak.